Note: This is a preview, and the film is based on a real case, so there will be some spoilers throughout.
Here at TV Goodness, we’re Matt Barr fans, and we were sorry to see the CW bail on Hellcats after one season. Barr returned to TV last year in the highly successful History Channel mini-series, Hatfields & McCoys, and he’s back on TV this Saturday night in a new “based on a true story” original film premiering on Lifetime.
Barr is the titular character in Romeo Killer: The Chris Porco Story. Porco was convicted in the death of his father and an attack on his mother, who survived and initially ID’d him (or police thought she did).
(Note: The real Porco filed an injunction to block the film from airing; a judge agreed Wednesday and then it was reversed on Thursday. While that was pending, Lifetime had scrubbed its site of all the video clips and images, and the microsite page was offline; it’s all back online now).
The movie begins with Chris being interviewed in jail and then jumps back to the crime scene at the family home and the arrival of Detective Sullivan (Eric McCormack), who knows the Porcos via their kids and his kids. Chris is happily at college when he gets the news while on a video chat with his his girlfriend that something’s wrong and he races home.Then we go to flashbacks to find out that maybe Chris wasn’t a model son.
The flashbacks are interspersed with Chris being interviewed by someone we don’t see and we follow the case all the way through the trial. Throughout, his mother, Joan (Lolita Davidovich), has flashes of the crime where she can’t clearly see her attacker. Despite her initial response to Sullivan that would seem to indict Chris, she later says it wasn’t him and stands by him during the trial.
Barr does an interesting characterization of Porco, playing him as someone who’s manipulative and persuasive, who believes in and is genuine about what he tells people, including maintaining his innocence, even though it’s possible he may not be telling the truth. Barr does not play him as guilty and hiding. They went with Lochlyn Munro, who I generally like, as Chris’s dad, and in real life Munro’s 18 years older than Barr, but they present more like brothers onscreen, so that’s a little jarring. Davidovich is very good as Joan and McCormack is compelling as the detective who isn’t swayed by Chris’s charisma.
The supporting cast also includes our new favorite Arrow nerd, Emily Bett Rickards, as Chris’s girlfriend, and Michael Hogan (BSG‘s Colonel Tigh) as his attorney. Vancouver stands in for upstate New York, so you’ll recognize several folks here and there throughout. The movie premieres tomorrow night at 8/7c and repeats several times this month. Here’s a sneak peek:
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